Several types of personal-care applicators, such as, e.g., mascara brushes, exist today, including bristled applicators. Examples include, without limitation, twisted-wire brushes, molded brushes, and tufted brushes. Twisted-wire brushes have generally circular fiber patterns. These patterns can be formed or modified by trimming the fibers in post-wiring or post-twisting steps, which can provide various geometric and functional patterns. While a typical process for making twisted-wire brushes provides a manufacturer with an ability, albeit limited, to vary the fiber type and fiber diameter, the variety of available patterns, aside from those achieved by trimming, is generally restricted to essentially circular configurations and specific fiber-density patterns, where abutting bristles must have comparable thickness. Limited choices of fiber-density patterns in the twisted-wire brushes are predicated on the inherent lack of ductility of the wire used to embed the bristles. If, for instance, relatively thick bristles are placed next to relatively thin bristles, the latter may slip though gaps formed in the twisted wire to accommodate the thick bristles (a so-called “tenting” of the wire as it twists).
Manufacturing brushes by molding, such as, e.g., injection molding or casting, allows one to choose almost any desired pattern. But every new brush design would necessarily require a new mold, which makes manufacturing brushes by molding both expensive and difficult to prototype. Molding also typically requires a multi-cycle batch processing, which is time-consuming. In addition, injection molding and casting most typically result in bristle patterns having a continuous taper and/or a mold-parting line throughout the bristle length, to enable the removal of the resulting brush from the mold. The continuous taper may not be desirable in some brush configurations; and the parting line may affect the functionality of the bristles and be otherwise perceived as aesthetically objectionable.
Tufted brushes can be manufactured by a staple and/or process a hot-melt process. These too include certain limitations. A staple process, for example, usually requires processing of identical or similar fibers; hence their selection, volume, and distribution are typically limited by the size of fibers-receiving holes. A hot-melt process, on the other hand, is labor-intense and can adversely impact fiber strength.
In addition, most manufacturing methods that have been utilized to produce cosmetic brushes, including the processes described herein above, typically require a so-called “batch” processing—as opposed to a continuous process. A batch process is typically more expensive and time-consuming than a continuous manufacturing process. Also, it can be more difficult to control the product quality from batch to batch—as compared to a continuous manufacturing process.
Ultrasonic welding of a fibrous material to a backing has been known. For example, anchoring a backing to a yarn pile wrapped around a moving band has been used in manufacturing fibrous articles such as weather-stripping pile products. Several U.S. patents, e.g., describe techniques for making weather-stripping pile articles by ultrasonically welding a yarn to a backing while both the yarn and the backing move along an assembly path: U.S. Pat. No. 4,148,953; U.S. Pat. No. 4,302,494; U.S. Pat. No. 5,338,382; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,807,451. The disclosures of these patents are incorporated herein by reference.
The present disclosure is directed to developing personal-care applicators that would offer manufacturers an ability to generate a greater degree of flexibility in producing new or multiple elements and new and multiple functionalities within the same applicator, allowing, at the same time, the creation of applicators having a wide variety of functional shapes and surfaces. More specifically, the present disclosure is directed, in one aspect, to various personal-care applicators comprising a plurality of bristles ultrasonically welded to a carrier. In another aspect, the present disclosure is directed to various bristled components for cosmetic applicators, in which pluralities of bristles are ultrasonically welded to carriers. In further aspects, the present disclosure is directed to processes for manufacturing said personal-care applicators and bristled components.